Dreadful Penny

Chapter 2

One week ago, Penelope Lee had stood on Fuad's terrace overlooking over the valley. The sun was descending beyond the mountain and the greenery was coming alive with safe domestic lights. Smoke from the kebab grill scented the air with cumin and pepper.

"Here," Fuad said, "have a glass of wine. It's Syrian, Domaine de Bargylus. This may be the last case we'll get for a while. The jihadis are closing in on them, poor bastards."

She accepted the glass and raised it in salute to Fuad's brother, Etienne, who was tending to the kafta. Their father had favored both Arab and French names. So: Fuad and Etienne. "To whatever you're cooking that smells so good."

Etienne replied with a shy smile as he fanned the kebabs with a palm leaf. He was the artist in the family, awkward but intense.

The wine was delicious and Penny drank more, looking over the darkening valley. "He's taking me to Dubai."

"We know," Fuad said.

"How?"

He shrugged. Fifty-something with only a bit of paunch, his hair going from black to pearl and therefore ever more leonine, he kept a grip on the indifference of command.

"Physical security," she began.

"What happened to you in London," he said, "has happened in this business many times before. Enough pointless talk."

She shut up before the conversation might stray back to that job. Let him think she had botched the job and paid the price, end of story. "A honey trap attracts flies, got it."

"You should be glad, Penny. We are near the end. The hardest part is already done. Timur's taking you—not any of the others, justyou—and we're going to have him exactly where we need him. And you won't be alone," he said. "We're sending Stack. He'll be in position in two or three days' time."

Stack had with her in London. He had told Fuad about the attack, ran the footage, and kept quiet about what had really come after.

"All right," Penny said, non-commital. Stack was another subject she'd rather not get into with their boss. "When do I get my money?"

"Once my client confirms receipt of the data. Buribaev is meeting the Chinese in Dubai at the Burj al Arab."

"You're sure of that?"

Fuad nodded in the gathering dark. "It was confirmed this morning in Beijing. The meet is nothing official. There won't be any minutes or records. Just Buribaev and General Liang, two men sitting down to dinner to see if they can do business together. But Buribaev won't leave Almaty without a laptop. You've observed his security measures?"

"Biometrics on all the hardware. Fingerprint and retina scan. That laptop is practically glued to his fingers."

"But he's never met an evil maid like you." Evil maid attack, hacker slang for physically accessing a computer while its owner was away—such as the apocryphal maid in a hotel, cracking the computer while the guest was absent. "There's something else I want you to find out."

The smoke from Etienne's kebabs was making her mouth water. "Is this for your client, Fuad, or for you?"

"I'd like to know why the meet is in Dubai."

"China's hungry for energy supplies," she reasoned. "Kazakhstan's a producer." She assumed Fuad's client, the one that had bankrolled her for the past two months, was in the oil game, eager to understand or disrupt whatever KazPetro or the Chinese were up to. But Fuad never revealed client names to his operatives. "What's it to us?"